...Elector | The Electoral College | Should it be done away with? | Presidential election seasons tend to be an exciting and volatile time within the United States. This is made ever more true by the existence of the Electoral College. When brought up in everyday conversation, the phrase Electoral College gets danced around and avoided. That is because it is such a difficult concept to get a grasp on. Not many people exactly know how our election system works due to the cryptic language that it normally is defined with. It is safe to assume that the uneducated voter believes that whichever candidate wins the most votes nationwide is the winner, and that is sound logic. However in the case of the Electoral College, that sound logic doesn’t hold true; one of the commonly disputed deficiencies of the electoral system. Are these criticisms justified or are they merely just complaints? Another important question to ask is why this system was put into place by our Founding Fathers; there must be a logical explanation, right? In order to begin to understand the system that is currently in place, it is best to look at why it was seen as a necessary measure and some of the history surrounding it. Our Founding Fathers thought it was important that the States and the citizens residing in them should have a say in the appointment of our nation’s leader. The last thing they wanted was to have Congress deciding who would become president. They feared this for several...
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...In 1787, the Constitutional Convention were trying to devise a method for electing the President. This method included selecting congress, state governors, state legislators, and other high political people to represent each state and ultimately help in choosing the President. This would later be known as the Electoral College. The only people allowed to be an elector are, Representatives, Senators, and a person who holds an office of trust in the United States. According to my textbook American Democracy Now, The Electoral College by definition is “a group of people elected by voters in each state to elect the president as well as the vice president”(Harrison Harris Deardorff 3rd Edition, 285) . But looking into the historical origins of the Electoral College, I realize that there is more to it than just that....
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...The Electoral College is derived from Article II of the Constitution, which asserts that each state has a number of electoral votes equal to its total number of Representatives to the House of Representatives and its two Senators. The 12th amendment dives further into the Electoral College process by establishing a majority is needed to be elected president and setting the guidelines to electing a president if neither candidate has a majority (House of Representatives votes). Recently, the Electoral College has become a subject of controversy. The primary concern with the Electoral College is that it raises the importance of particular states during the election cycle. The election focuses on those states thus diminishing the impact of the...
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...! ! The United States Electoral College system and its contemporary challenge ! Is the Electoral College process still relevant today ? ! For some of us - European people that are accustomed to the universal suffrage - the Electoral College process and its outcome may seem a bit surprising. In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, for example, more Americans voted for Gore, but Bush actually won the presidency because he was awarded the majority of Electoral College votes. It's a political upset that's occurred several times since the first U.S. presidential election; four presidents have been elected by the Electoral College after losing the popular vote. We'll explore briefly the historic start of the process and describe two original aspects of the political controversies surrounding the outcome of the Electoral College system : the winner-take-all method of allocating the state’s electors and faithlessness : the possibility for a member of the Electoral College to be a faithless elector which characterises a member of the Electoral College who for whatever reason does not vote for the presidential candidate for whom he or she had pledged to vote - or does not vote at all. In 1787 a group of leaders of what was a year before the thirteen colonies of Great Britain drafted the Constitution of the United States, they reached the now infamous ThreeFifths Compromise to determine the population of the different states that would then be used to decide the number of seats allocated...
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...Relevancy of the Electoral College The President is defined as the elected head, or leader, of a republican state. A republic a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives. The United States of America has proficiently based their processes on electing these officials, known as a President, on this basis. Their process included the voting of citizens in the United States for their [the people's] preferred delegate. The Founding Fathers of the United States developed a system where for the votes of the people to be counted for at a higher rate. This system is known as the Electoral College. The United States’ electoral college system throughout the years have been seen to work exceptionally well but many perceive the Electoral College to be both unfair and controversial. The Electoral College's role throughout the years of elections was ultimately against the true morals of the election process. To identify the controversial issue brought upon by the...
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...Electoral College, Time for Change? By Chris Brady May 21, 2014 Introduction: The history of the Electoral College was born by the founding fathers during the Constitutional Convention. There were roughly four ideas of how to elect a president to the United States. First was the idea of giving the power to Congress to choose the president, but detractors worried that giving the authority to Congress could create corruption, political bargaining, and foreign influence on their choice. Plus this could upset the balance of power that the founding fathers were trying to create with the Constitution. Secondly was the idea of giving the authority to the state legislatures. This idea was swiftly rejected for the fact that many believed that the president could be controlled by the State Legislature and decrease the federal authority and undermine the founding fathers idea of separation of powers. The third idea was to let the president be chosen by a direct popular vote. This was also rejected because the founding fathers believed that because of the lack of information for a candidate a state would just vote for a candidate from that particular state or region. The framers saw the possibility of at worst that no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. They believed that for a best case scenario would be that the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones...
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...The Electoral College: How it works Axia College University of Phoenix How do we elect the President? Many people do not understand the process by which we elect the President. They do not understand how the Electoral College works. Bill Stern (Andrews, 1996) said, “Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay.” Oftentimes, people vote based on public opinion or information obtained by the media. Voters should inform themselves on how the Electoral College works in order to make good decisions when voting for the president. Electoral College delegates elect the President. Voters elect Electoral College delegates. The Electoral College was created as a compromise between election by Congress or popular vote for the presidential election process. At the time, some politicians believed an election by popular vote was not good for the country, and others did not want to give that much power to the Congress. Although the Electoral College has had critics and controversy since its beginning, it has delivered a President and a Vice President in 54 elections. Our founding fathers formed the Electoral College in Article II, Section I, of the United States Constitution, it states, “each state shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress (U.S. Constitution, 1787)”. The Constitution does not state...
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...The amendment in the constitution that is outdated is the 12th amendment. This amendment defines the process of the presidential election, but has long passed its usefulness. There are quite a few reasons to eliminate the electoral college. On more than a few occasions, like the current 2016 election, the president has won the electoral college vote, but they did not win the popular vote. This makes the American people believe that their vote is useless in this country. The next reason is that there are many states that are pretty guaranteed to go red or blue; ergo, the candidates will not spend much time in those states as they have no need to waste their time. A republican candidate would not attempt to spend a lot of time in California because...
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...this election, where both candidates are corrupt and unfit. Also, I feel as though the electoral college should be abolished. Voting is a waste of time because it is the electoral college who ultimately chooses the president and not the American people.Many people don’t understand the logistics of the electoral college and just how much they impact the lives of Americans. In...
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...THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration (The views expressed here are solely those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the Federal Election Commission or any division thereof.) In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that: • was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable) believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office."). • • • How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other? Origins of the Electoral College The...
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...The Eleventh Amendment was added to the Constitution on February 7, 1795. The Supreme Court made a decision in the court case of Chisholm v. Georgia, weather citizens of one state can go against another state or foreign country in the court. The Supreme Court agreed, but Congress passed the Eleventh Amendment going against the court, stating that the Judicial power of the United States cannot pass the standards of the law and fairness of a state going against another state or foreign country. “National Archives and Records Administration and Shmoop Editorial Team”. The Twelfth Amendment was added to the Constitution on June 15, 1804. In the presidential election of 1800, Jefferson beat Adams, but was in tie with Burr in the Electoral College....
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...government with the power to decide who to vote. Today’s century, the United States will not allow the people to vote for president and Vice President directly, but they utilize Electoral College to represent voter’s choice. In the Constitution article 2, section 1, clause 2 it states in specific detail how many electors each state is entitled to have. The...
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...The Electoral College is a very fair way to elect the President of the United States it represents all areas of the country. I don’t think the Electoral College should be replaced there may be so ways to improve it but not replace. The Electoral College was approved when the 12th Amendment was ratified in 1804. I think this system is fair because all areas of the country must be heard so it gives every state a voice. If you look at past elections different states have decided the election. Sometime it Iowa, maybe Wisconsin or Michigan, even Ohio or North Carolina. This system forces candidates to go to Iowa and Ohio to hear the concerns of those people. The Electoral College changes often when the census is done and congressional lines are...
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...Electoral College POS 2050 Electoral College In 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention decided on this particular system for electing the president. The Electoral College is still in effect today, but some adjustments have been made over the years. The electors voted for two candidates at first. The one with the highest number of votes became president. The one with the second-highest number became vice president. In 1796, political foes were chosen for the two posts -- Federalist John Adams for president and Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson for vice president. There was a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in the next election. The House of Representatives had to decide who would be president. The fact that the system needed to be adjusted was clear. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1804. Candidates are now nominated to run only for president or only for vice president. Electors vote for president and vice president separately. How the states elect electors has changed, too. Some states held direct popular elections for the electors in the beginning. The state legislatures made the choice in other states. All the states gradually adopted direct popular elections for electors. There were no political parties when the Constitution was written. They soon developed, and the party organizations in each state began proposing a slate, or list, of electors who were pledged to vote for their party's nominee. Voters no longer choose...
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...The Electoral College (EC) was established in Article II of the Constitution and amended by the 12th Amendment in 1804. Each state gets a number of electors equal to its number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives plus one for each of its two U.S. Senators creating a total of 538 electoral votes. A majority winner must receive 270 votes to be elected. With a few minor exceptions, the Electoral College gives all of the electoral votes for each state to the plurality winner in that state, regardless of the margin of victory. This "winner takes all" arrangement at the state level can elect a President who loses the popular vote, as was the case in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000. Firstly, one reason supporting the abolishment of the EC is that it suppresses the popular will. This is because it may allow a candidate to win despite only receiving a minority of votes across the country as a whole. For example, in the 2000 elections Gore received approximately 500,000 more of the popular vote than Bush winning in most major cities and urban counties. However, Bush received more electoral votes throughout the rest of the nation winning more than three times the amount of counties than Gore. It also suppresses the popular will through faithless electors. These are members of the House of Representatives who were chosen to vote for a party but do not vote for their state’s preferred candidate. For example, in the 2000 election, Barbara Simmons abstained voting for Al Gore to protest...
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